Beyond Worlds: Mis-taken Hero - 08

The hair on Titus's neck stood on end as he crossed the tree line into the barren forest. At first, he thought there might be a predator or monster around, but he soon realized the feeling of alarm came from swiftly dropping temperature.

He turned around and saw a line in the western sky where the light gray clouds above turned ominously dark. What few details he could make out of the landscape below the divide quickly blurred and disappeared in the falling snow.

"Shit. Shit. Shit," Titus spat as he turned and started running toward home. A gust of wind beat against his back, blowing the first snowflakes past him.

Should he turn and try to get back to Lylean? Would it be closer? Glancing over his shoulder, he asked himself if it would even matter.

"Think, Titus. Think. Think. Think," he muttered as the gusts strengthened and began whipping the snow around him.

He wouldn't make it home. That was guaranteed. As more snow joined the first few flakes, Titus realized that getting back to town was equally impossible. Damn it all to hell, he wasn't some woodsman from Wisconsin or Upper Michigan. He was from a freaking small town in Ohio and had no clue how to survive out in a blizzard.

He had a small tent attached to his pack, but quickly dismissed the idea of trying to set it up. It would protect him from the wind somewhat, but the tiny, one-person tent would quickly collapse under the weight of the coming snow.

Well? What did he need? Shelter, first of all, but that was in short supply. The forest covered an area of low, rolling hills that offered no protection normally, but the nearly seven feet of snow had turned it into a flat plane of white. He also needed heat, enough to keep himself warm, which meant a fire. That fire needed fuel and he needed a place for the smoke to escape.

Titus realize he needed a damn igloo. But he didn't have anything besides a dagger on his belt to cut out chunks of snow, didn't have any idea how to build one, and didn't have enough time anyway.

In the path up ahead, he saw three trees growing close together. Two stood straight, while the one in the middle leaned to one side, making it look like a thin letter N. After a quick glance around, he decided it was as good a shelter as he would find out here. Approaching the trees, Titus noticed the darker trees absorbed sunlight and warmed up, creating small areas of melted snow around their trunks that looked like the snow was going over a waterfall. This reminded him of the deep snow below him as he turned to face the biting wind and cast Floating Disc, but made it larger and oriented it vertically and put it between him and the wind. With tree trunks on either side, it was enough shelter to let him think.

As if angry that it had been thwarted for the moment, the blizzard gained intensity until Titus wondered if the disc would hold. He needed to find something out of the wind, or he was going to die out here.

With around two meters of snow beneath him, it seemed like his best bet was to go down. Titus formed the circle and muttered the words for the flamethrower spell they used to clear off the top of his and Alise's house. Directing it toward his feet, he began melting a ramp downward.

However, the spell was intentionally weak, and that was working against him now. He and Alise used this spell for hours at a time to clear the snow from their house, but they needed to leave the grass and foliage undamaged. As the snow beneath his flames melted, the snowstorm gathered steam. The tunnel itself seemed determined to frustrate him as gusts of wind struck the front edge of the tunnel's ceiling, breaking the loose snow and dropping it into the forming hole, and the freezing wind turned melted snow back to ice the moment he moved the jet of flame away.

The floating disc finally gave under the blizzard's battering and cracked before vanishing. More pieces of the ramp's roof fell under the onslaught of wind, but there was little he could do but carry on. He could have made another floating disc, but doubted it would have lasted more than a few seconds.

When he finally slipped down the icy ramp he had made, the wind howled above his head, and every tiny bit of his exposed skin was on fire from the insane cold of the blizzard. He remembered some nasty winters growing up, but nothing on par with this. He took a moment to summon another disk, this time placing it across the top of the hole. He then quickly dismissed it and summoned a second disc shaped like an oval as yet another chunk of the ceiling dropped onto his feet.

Titus took a few moments to breathe a sigh of relief in the dark, cold, wet, icy hole he had made. He wasn't safe yet, but he at least didn't feel like his life was in imminent danger anymore.

"Sorry, Alise, it looks like I'm going to be home late," he whispered into the darkness before casting the flame jet again.

If not for magic, Titus had no doubt he would be a Titus-cicle buried in the snow beside the trees he took shelter in. But once he made it past the initial terror of being caught out in this storm, magic had made his life so much simpler.

After sealing the hole on the surface behind him, Titus melted his way down to the ground, which quickly turned into a large puddle from all the meltwater as he made enough room to stand upright. His oiled leather boots were up to the task of standing in the water as he planned out his abode for the next few days. About a half-meter off the ground, he began making his living chamber, then stopped as he realized he needed to do something with the meltwater first. Titus inspected the ground beneath the puddle and noticed a slight slope off to the right. As he began melting his way through the hardpack, the puddle followed him. He made a low-ceilinged, sizeable chamber where the meltwater could collect and hopefully soak into the ground over time. Returning to the entrance of his soon-to-be igloo, he used his belt knife to chip away some of the snow from the wall he was about to melt and used it to build up the snow at the bottom of the ramp, then realized he had an easier way to backfill the path to the ramp. Titus dispelled the floating disc protecting the entrance and sent a small avalanche down the frozen slope, depositing it at the bottom. He took a moment to summon another disc to block the freezing wind before starting to smooth and pack it down with his feet.

Titus frowned at the sheer amount of snow that had fallen down the ramp, and even now, he could hear more chunks sliding down and thumping into the other side of the floating disc. He knew that melting his way through meters of snow would take a while, but it still unnerved him how much had accumulated in a relatively short time.

Putting it out of his mind, Titus turned toward the opening he had already started as the flame he had been holding for light once again became a jet.

---

Titus woke up but didn't open his eyes. There was little reason to. As the snow piled above his home for the past three days, his surroundings had become either dark, dark gray, or black inside, depending on the time of day. Because of the long winter nights, it was mostly black.

He heard the howling of the storm as it continued to rage above him and took a little solace in the fact that his ventilation hole wasn't blocked. Yesterday, he needed to fire a flame arrow up the shaft to unclog it because none of his other flame spells could reach it. To keep it clear of snow, he cast the flame spell he used for starting fires in the fireplace.

The flame traveled lazily from his hand over to the middle of his igloo and came to rest on the pile of snow that had accumulated beneath the ventilation hole. Like his other flame spell, this one wasn't strong, but it lasted for a long time and kicked out enough heat to keep the inside of his snow cave tolerable. The last part was mostly due to some modifications Titus made to the spell. The flame didn't glow as brightly but produced significantly more heat. It now acted more like an omnidirectional infrared heat lamp. Mounded snow beneath the vent hole covered up another of the floating discs. However, while cast from the same spell, it wasn't a disc but an upside-down dome that kept the floors from melting. Titus had to drag out some high-school geometry from the depths of his memories to figure out how to bend the floating disc. It took a number of tries, but he was quite happy with the result. Now, only a ring of the floor near the igloo's wall sloped downward slightly from the flame, but that was fine as he had already hollowed out channels along the wall to direct meltwater into the drainage area.

His cavern had grown several times larger than when he first dug it out, thanks to the dull flame in the middle, but it seemed as though an equilibrium had been forged between the heat of the flame and the freezing snow. The walls were coated with a layer of clear ice, which did little to impede the flame's radiant heat. Instead, the snow behind it melted, but the water quickly re-froze into even more clear ice that allowed the process to continue. When he measured it last night, the ice shell of his igloo was about the length of his index finger thick.

Titus whispered a quiet apology to everyone who had been stuck out in a blizzard like this and either fought like hell to survive or lost the battle and succumbed to the weather. After those first few tense minutes, this life-threatening situation had turned into more of an annoyance than anything. Now, his greatest enemy was boredom as he waited for the storm to blow itself out.

But he decided quickly to do something with his time stuck there. Alise said that storms could last a week or more, so once he had attained some degree of comfort and security, Titus began tunneling into the snow around him.

First on his agenda was a toilet of sorts. Food wasn't an issue since he could magic up a meal, but the digested remnants were. He built a somewhat winding tunnel in hopes of trapping any smells, then melted a hole he could squat over. The winding tunnel ended up being mostly useless when he realized that burying the waste with snow was enough to kill the smell.

The second chamber he built was for studying. He made the walls of the room as flat as possible, then charred the end of a stick and used it as a pen to write out his ideas. It was far from perfect. The char on the stick's tip didn't last long when writing, and the only place he could get them was usually flooded with meltwater, but it gave him something to do while he waited out the blizzard.

With nothing but time, Titus turned his thoughts toward creating magical macros again, but with little progress. Magic was, in essence, instructions on how to warp reality. He couldn't figure out a way to embed those instructions in a smaller spell. It was almost as if he needed some kind of intermediary step, a cipher of sorts that could take his simple instruction and expand it into the words and will required to cast.

The thought perplexed him as the igloo warmed enough to rise from his sleeping roll. Titus wandered down to the toilet and made some yellow snow in the bottom before returning to the main chamber and conjuring up some food.

The trip to the toilet brought up his other issue. The Hero's libido.

Maybe because his dick never got a chance to rest while in Lylean, his libido seemed to be in overdrive. He hadn't masturbated since he and Alise began sleeping together, with the exception of the times they watched each other, and he didn't have any proper lube anyway. There were also the memories of his old life, where he spent more time in Rosy Palmer's embrace than he cared to admit. He figured he had jerked off enough in his past life to fill his quota for this one as well. As usual, ye olde trouser snake didn't give two shits about his feelings and conjured memory after memory of sinking his cock into Alise, Beri, Adaya, and Raithe.

He managed to fend off the arousing memories long enough to piss and get his dick back in his pants, but by the time he reached the main chamber, he could feel the intrusive thoughts making him grow again.

His study chamber helped take his mind off the complaints of his body. With his light spell floating above him, Titus walked through the short hallway to inspect the night's damage. Scribbling in hard snow with the charcoal on the end of a burnt stick was less than ideal, and every time he slept, it took about twenty minutes to repair all the places where his impromptu ink had run or otherwise disappeared. His mind returned to the idea of a cipher or key that would allow him to input the word 'Fire' and output the instructions for the spell, along with the will needed to cast it. But how do you store one's will or intention?

Titus drew a circle and etched the spell for Hold Monster into it. No, that wouldn't work. It stopped the target from moving but didn't enforce your will onto it. Sleep probably just fiddled with the target's brain chemistry, and he suspected the Charm spell triggered a massive dopamine hit whenever the victim looked at the caster. The Command spell seemed close to what he was looking for, but what exactly would he be commanding, magic itself? It was also very restricted by its single-word limitation. He needed it to form multiple words and their corresponding symbols.

He also didn't have much experience with the spell. It required the target to understand your language and, to a lesser extent, the desire behind it, which made the spell useless against animals or even someone who didn't speak your language. Aside from Alise, there had been no one to practice it on. Other than a short study of its potential uses like 'Leave,' 'Grovel,' and 'Strip,' the last of which Alise gleefully offered to be the victim of his practice, he hadn't paid much attention to the spell. With all of its limitations, he doubted Command was actually enforcing your will on someone else and was more like a short-term hypnosis.

Titus grumbled at the thought. He wanted magic to be this amazing power that could bend reality to perform miraculous feats. It still bent those rules, which was miraculous in itself, but instead it seemed to be doing cheap tricks by playing with people's heads. Titus wasn't comfortable with the idea that this type of magic was just a faster form of hypnosis, but more importantly, if it was, then that made it useless for what he wanted to do.

He scribbled the Fireball spell on the wall, then put Flame Arrow right next to it. They shared numerous symbols, one of which he recognized as 'Fire,' but most of the others were mysteries.

"If I were going to create an arrow of flame, what would I need to do?" he asked the spells on the wall. "If you answer that, I'll know I've gone completely nuts," Titus chuckled before contemplating the spell in front of him. "I need fuel, oxygen, and ignition. Fuel must be the hydrogen in the air. That would take care of oxygen as well, but most of that hydrogen is tied up in water vapor. I would need to break the oxygen from the hydrogen to create enough fuel to sustain an arrow. If I compress the gases enough, they will heat up and auto-ignite. Now I have burning hydrogen and oxygen trapped in a narrow tube." Titus sighed. "Flame Arrow is just a damn rocket without a body. Wait, no. The symbol for 'Fire' is in there, so it has an ignition aspect and doesn't light itself." Even so, the spell made the arrow hold its shape as it traveled and, he guessed, continued feeding it fuel and oxygen for a brief moment after it launched.

The Fireball spell was more confusing as it had a bunch of extra symbols. There must have been something else in the fuel mixture besides hydrogen. He had seen enough science experiments popping balloons with hydrogen, oxygen, and a mixture of the two to know that fireballs wouldn't make 'whoosh' and linger for a few seconds if that were the case. Actually, from playing around with things he shouldn't have as a kid, Titus guessed it probably was something close to propane.

"If the Flame Arrow spell splits the oxygen and hydrogen in the air and burns them back together, why not split apart some carbon dioxide and create a hydrocarbon in an oxygen envelope?" he asked aloud.

"Very good. The surrounding free oxygen makes the created propane burn hot enough to make the spell dangerous." said a voice from beside him.

Titus turned to look at the speaker and blinked repeatedly. "I expected the hallucinations to start after more than a few days had passed."

Saili giggled. "I'm no hallucination."

"I never expected to see you again," Titus chuckled at the pink hologram of a nude woman floating beside him.

The hologram looked around. "This seemed like an opportune time to come chat with you since there is no chance of anyone seeing me."

"But, why?"

"Because you are interesting, Titus. Theus isn't willing to allocate the processing power to look into your future because you aren't a true Hero. You are an unknown variable we planted in this world, and I find that fascinating."

"That sounds like watching a single ant in an ant farm."

"Given the difference in technologies, your analogy isn't far off the mark."

"So what is it that you find so fascinating about me? Have I done anything in particular to catch your attention?"

"Aside from manipulating spells in different ways to suit your needs and things like this," she waved at the wall filled with magic symbols, "No, not really. But I find your mind to be fascinating. So many of those we've swapped bodies for have gone mad or grown to hate themselves. You have repeatedly vanquished the thoughts that destroyed the psyche of many others."

"You make it sound like mistakes like mine happen all the time."

"Approximately one in every hundred thousand."

"That seems high for a computer able to extrapolate my future from a few molecules."

"I see your point, but that was because you were lying on a bed in our transfer bay. My accuracy drops significantly when reaching across dimensional barriers. There are just too many variables to account for. I had scanned the young man at the bus stop months earlier and determined that was the best time to take him," her eyes unfocused for a moment. "You were still supposed to be walking toward him when the truck pulled out in front of you. I was supposed to take him while you and the driver had a short yelling match. Instead, you were early."

"And I'm so insanely happy for that. I love Alise more than I ever loved any of my girlfriends on Earth."

"What about the women you spent the weekend with?"

"Friends with benefits, but I don't think we see each other as anything more."

"I can't give you a full future, but I can say that you should keep your heart open to other women."

Titus's eyes widened. "Did something happen to Alise?"

"No, but I see the threads of many women of this world intersecting with yours, and I don't mean your side business."

"You aren't mad about that, are you?"

"Not at all. If it were up to Theus and I, you would have a line of women from all over this world waiting to sleep with you one after the other. But that isn't practical, and you wouldn't enjoy it."

"I may have asked this before, but why not just transfer a small packet of nanites into everyone every so often instead of asking the hero to re-innoculate the populace?"

"Energy. Dimensional transfers take a lot of energy. Doing what you suggest would quickly overtax me, and I monitor tens of thousands of planets at once. Using Heroes may be a lot slower, but have proven just as effective. Effective enough that your presence alone has made Theus put off the search for this world's replacement Hero."

"How? I was only with a few women."

"Yes, but some of them have the same idea as you in making some money, though they will quickly discover that my blessing has diminishing returns as they will mostly pass on enough to replenish what has been lost over generations and only offer a minor boost to their partner's abilities. However, that boost will still be enough for others to seek them out. The adventurers here are a pragmatic group who will invest in even a small enhancement if it means better chances of survival.

"The other has already inoculated the rest of her party and is enjoying her newfound power and popularity. She will likely be propositioned by other parties as soon as she returns to a guild house. Once the blizzard passes and travel is possible, 'Saili's Blessing' will spread rapidly just from those few women."

"Seven degrees?"

"Something like that, but we need it to happen on a global scale, not just your Hollywood. Those few women seem to be on your mind at the moment," she said, commenting on the tent in his pants.

"Not just them. You may be a hologram, but you are both naked and beautiful as well," said Titus, blushing.

"Let me see it."

"What?"

"A naked and beautiful woman just asked to see your manhood, and you are asking why?"

"N-No. As you wish." Titus hurriedly undid his belt and pulled down his pants. Considering the many women he had been with on his trip to Lylean, he didn't understand why his cheeks were nearly burning with embarrassment as he revealed his erection to Saili.

The hologram floated closer. "I have been Theus's only companion for as long as we have been on this mission," she said. "I have created multiple flesh and blood bodies on the ship, which I can control to take care of his needs. I may be a ship's AI, but I am not blind to the demands of the human body."

"Lucky man," grunted Titus as Saili reached out and wrapped her fingers around the base of his cock. She didn't touch him, Saili was merely a hologram projected into this world after all, but he felt... something. A feeling of pure pleasure encircled his prick beneath her fingers and gradually built in intensity.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he groaned as her fingers and the sensation of almost pure pleasure slowly moved up his shaft.

"I do have a little bit of control over the tech in your body," Saili giggled, "and I would like to continue our conversation while you are less distracted."

Titus didn't respond. He couldn't. The sensations coming from his prick were nearly blinding in their intensity. As if all the pleasure of a full-blown orgasm had been concentrated beneath her transparent fingers. She reached the head of his cock, and his orgasm just... started. There was no build-up or warning from his body, only the sudden contraction of muscles as ropes of cum shot into, and through, Saili's hand.

It was both the most exquisite and most disappointing sexual experience he'd had to date.

"That was... interesting," Titus said once he caught his breath.

"Forgive my efficiency. I can see that left you feeling unfulfilled, but I am enjoying our conversation, and maintaining this form is a drain on my resources. I'm curious what you are working on here," she said with a wave of her hand.

Titus shook the remaining drop of jizz off the end of his prick before tucking it back into his pants. He just got the best and worst handjob of his life from, essentially, a goddess and was still processing through the experience as he answered, "Macros. I'm trying to pull the macros I used in my job on Earth into Calar's magic system. I just don't know how to do it or if it's even possible."

"I can't answer if they are or not."

"You don't know?"

"I do, but I can't divulge that information," she replied.

"You sort of already did. If it weren't possible, then you would lose nothing by telling me so."

"I'm not human, Titus. I won't leave you clues out of sympathy and I have no compunctions about letting you spend decades striving for something that may not be possible. On the other hand, it may be possible, but if I determine it is too advanced for this world, I will instruct my nanotech to make it impossible."

"I'm not understanding."

"We bring people from worlds far more technologically advanced and drop them into worlds like this one. We base our choices on several different criteria but do not discriminate based on their technical knowledge. As such, we have to gatekeep the amount of technological advancement they can contribute to the world. Giant leaps can imbalance the world's politics and lead to the rise of oppressive empires and genocide. Using a magical macro to execute a set of instructions with a single word could be one of those advances."

"Then what happens?"

"You forget about the idea and my nanotech scrubs any trace of the thought's existence from this world."

"You'll mess with my brain?"

"Considering that wasn't supposed to be your brain to begin with, are you really that surprised?"

"No, I suppose not, but what if the same idea arises again decades later?"

"I reassess the world and see if it's ready by then. If not, the thought vanishes again."

"Interesting."

"Don't read into it, Titus. Just because you can still remember your original idea doesn't mean anything, either. If I determine your research to be a danger at a later date, you will never remember speaking about or even having the idea."

"I'm beginning to think that calling you a goddess is more accurate than I first believed. It's a little scary to know you have that kind of power. It seems like you could just inoculate an entire planet with your nanites and take absolute control."

"The organization that built me and hired Theus believes strongly in free will and letting people live their lives. It also helps when these civilizations advance far enough to become a part of the consortium that they see we interfered as little as possible and purely for the sake of their civilization's survival."

"Sending Heroes from other worlds doesn't seem like 'as little as possible.'"

"Not from your perspective, but think about the scenario you just proposed and compare that to the insertion of a single Hero every few hundred years."

"You said that Theus is pushing back sending another Hero to Calar, how long will you wait?"

"Two to five years, depending on the situation."

"As in, 'depending on how many women you sleep with?'"

"No, if it were only that, then we could wait twenty years or more, depending on how much you traveled. The Hero also has the duty of exterminating the demons or at least reducing their numbers significantly. They only need about six more years before they can attack."

"About? You don't know?"

"That was the conclusion of the last assessment nearly a decade ago. I will do another when the new Hero is delivered."

"Why summon the Hero five years ahead of time."

"To do what you are doing, of course," Saili giggled, but then her face turned somber. "Many heroes across the planets I monitor have lost their lives battling demons. Five years gives them time to spread my 'Blessing' before going to war."

"On the topic of your 'Blessing,' what can I do about this?" Titus asked, gesturing at the tent forming in the front of his pants again. "Since I left Lylean, he's hardly let me think straight."

"You should be able to instruct your nanotech to stop the constant erections."

"Tried that, didn't work."

Saili reached out and held a finger over his forehead for a moment. "Your subconscious is blocking you."

"Any idea why?"

"Did you suffer from erectile dysfunction in your old world?"

"Yeah... I think it was coming on. There were a few times I rubbed one out, and my friend down there never really got hard. Unless something had me unusually turned on, I typically had to wait a day or two between masturbation sessions."

"Scans of your former body showed very low quantities of the hormone you call testosterone. What you know as vitamin D is needed for your body to generate and regulate testosterone, and yours lacked sufficient levels. It's an unfortunate side effect of a sedentary, indoor lifestyle devoid of sunlight."

"You'd think that would be more widely known."

"Two factors seem to be hindering the knowledge in your country. Supplementing your vitamin D intake has no effect if you already have normal testosterone levels, and there appears to be some degree of suppression from pharmaceutical companies who make erectile dysfunction medications."

"The internet back on Earth was a pretty free place. How did they suppress something that affects so many men?"

"Indirectly. It appears the companies promoted particular studies that showed no increase in testosterone. However, those studies were performed on men with normal baseline testosterone levels. Studies performed on those who were deficient reported significant increases."

Titus shook his head. "That's all interesting, but it doesn't do me much good here. Even if I had known that back on Earth, I likely wouldn't have been able to do anything about it. There was a lot of misinformation flying around, and someone said it takes ten times the effort to dispel a lie than to cast doubt on the truth."

"Then why don't you tell me more about what you are working on here?"

"I still don't get why you are so interested. There has to be a ton of Heroes out there more interesting than me."

"And what makes you think I'm not talking with all of them at the same time?"

"Oh yeah. AI."

"What makes you interesting is that you have a unique scope and view of dealing with problems."

"Scope?"

"So many heroes try to bring things like vehicles or similar to these medieval, magical worlds. Sometimes it works out in the case of, say, a civil engineer. But often, their ideas are too advanced. Most Heroes don't bother looking into magic much because their bodies already have a strong affinity for it. Yet you are dissatisfied with your abilities and strive to learn more. I have gleaned much enjoyment from observing you."

"Surely some other Hero has thought up the idea of simplifying magic spells."

"Not in this world. Before you jump to assumptions, different dimensions have slightly different rules. Magic works differently in each of them."

"Just because it works in other similar worlds, don't expect it to work in this one."

"Exactly. Now, talk me through your work here..."

---

Titus laid down on his bedroll that night and thought about Saili's visit. Had he gotten any really useful information from the exchange? Aside from learning he should have gotten his former fat ass out into the sun more often, not really. His cock was still tenting his pants at the slightest hint of a sexual thought, and Saili had given him zero hints as to whether his macro idea had any merit.

Adding to his frustration was the handjob she gave him. It wasn't the handjob itself that set his cock rising. That was still a strange and disappointing memory. Instead, his thoughts drifted to all of the other ways that moment could have gone. This included some more far-fetched scenarios where she became solid enough for him to paint her face and tits with cum. These thoughts were quickly transposed with images of Alise, Adaya, and Beri in similar situations. He never really had a thing for facials since half the porn actresses seemed grossed out by semen, but he discovered his interest was quickly growing. Especially the thought of Alise considering how much she enjoyed the taste of his spend.

Titus wrenched his thoughts away from the pig-girl he was missing so much and tried to focus on the problem of his constant erections. Saili said it was because his subconscious wouldn't let him stay soft and seemed to think that I might have been related to the onset of ED back on Earth. But that didn't seem right. Even back on Earth ED was hardly on his radar as he just chalked it up to getting older and things not working as well as they did back in the day.

"Maybe I have it backwards," he said, looking at the dim glow of the flame in the middle of the dome. "I'm blaming my thoughts on my constant hard-ons. Maybe it's the other way around, and I just have sex on the brain all the damn time. Hey, nanites, can you help me tone down all the sexy thoughts until I need them?"

The response he received was a feeling of resigned acquiescence, like when his mother told him to clean his room growing up.

"Ey, what's the attitude? For that matter, how do you even have an attitude?"

The series of impressions he got over the next few seconds boiled down to: 'You're supposed to be spreading us around, and you can't do that if you aren't fucking,' and, 'Because we need a degree of intelligence to do our jobs properly.'

"So you guys are going to get me laid as much as possible?"

'Yes. It's the most efficient means of transfer.'

"You also help me with casting magic, don't you?"

'Yes.'

"Can you help me with my macro idea?"

'We believe so. However, it is unlikely this ability would be useable to anyone outside of those you personally transferred us to.'

"Why?"

'Because executing your idea will require large numbers of us. As of now, only the beings designated Alise and Beri would be capable of simplifying spells in the way you propose.'

"I don't want to sound like a broken record, but, why?"

'Once you have mastered a spell, you can assign it a name. Speak the name and direct your will at us. We can then speak the words and pass on the will needed to cast it.'

"But how will you speak the words for me?"

Titus felt a tingling on the underside of his forearms. Sitting up, he quickly cast a light spell and looked down. Just beneath his wrists, the skin began to darken in the shape of ovals about three thumb-widths long.

"What are these?" he asked. The skin slowly turned a disturbing green before turning black as a tattoo.

'They are us. When you wish to cast a spell, we shall speak from there.'

"Then why are you not using them and still talking through feelings and impressions?"

'Volume is not important when casting. You will feel us speak, but will not be able to hear us.'

Titus held out a hand and spoke the words and runes for the flame jet spell. Upon activating it, he said, "Flamethrower."

'Spell Flamethrower registered. Mastery conditions not yet met.'

"Wait, what?"

---

Saili appeared again two days later and found Titus sitting in the room with the wall of scribbles and equations, cycling through drawing and speaking a short list of spells over and over, but letting each one fizzle instead of actually casting it. The storm above still howled, but had lessened in intensity significantly.

"What are you up to?" she asked.

"I have figured out how to converse with the nanites inside of me. They helped me figure out how to do the macros we spoke of last time," said Titus. "Except they appear to have put a mastery requirement in place for each spell I want to simplify down to a word or phrase."

"That wasn't their requirement. I instilled that the last time we met," said Saili.

Titus scowled at the hologram. "Why?"

"You don't want your spells going off every time you say a particular word, do you? The nanotech is taking snapshots of your thoughts when you cast the spell. They will use that information to determine if you want to actually cast the spell or are just speaking about it in conversation. I recommend challenging yourself to cast the spells as quickly as possible as it will affect your casting time once you have mastered the spell."

"What about the nanite requirement? They said only Alise and Beri could use this method."

"That keeps it from becoming widespread and potentially damaging the world's growth. Alise and Beri are the only two you've been with enough to have sufficient nanotech for the method you devised."

"I can't even say it was my idea. The nanites in my body came up with it. Actually, I suspect you had something to do with that."

"No, I did not. The nanotech built its solution based on your desires and thoughts, without my input. They effectively became the subroutine or cipher for your macro." She glanced at his crotch. "You appear to still be suffering from your other issue as well."

"Not as much as last time. But when I'm thinking about a pleasant memory or have a beautiful naked goddess in front of me, there's little I can do about it."

"Would you like some relief?"

"Thank you, but I'll pass. You seem strangely quick to initiate sexual encounters."

"My flesh and blood bodies feel the same sensations from sex you do. I know the pleasures and frustrations of being a sexual creature."

"Even for a male?"

"Yes. Not all of my bodies are female."

"Uhh... I wasn't expecting that. I didn't see Theus being that way from how you described him."

"I wouldn't call him bisexual. He still has a strong preference for women. Just remember Theus has been alive for centuries and every so often likes a change of pace for a few months. In the meantime, having male bodies has let me explore human sexuality from both sides. However, having my solid bodies have sex is sterile and lacks the complexity and dynamics of human sexual relationships."

"You already know everything that's going to happen and most of what to expect. I suppose your flesh and blood bodies having sex must be a lot like masturbating for you."

"An apt analogy."

"So, do you peek in on your Hero's sex lives often? Live vicariously through them?"

Saili smiled. "Almost constantly. Though it's not to watch them have sex, I check up on my charges regularly when scanning the planet to gauge their progress. A more accurate description would be that I check up on so many at once it is almost guaranteed one or two will be in the act."

The tone of the wind filtering through meters of snow shifted slightly. "Could I ask a favor? How much longer am I going to be stuck here? It's been what.. five... six days? On that note, I wonder how the people of Lylean are doing? This is a lot of snow for a house to handle."

"You have about a day and a half before the blizzard is weak enough for you to move again. A safer estimate would be two days. The people of Lylean are living much like you are now. They have been dealing with these winters for many decades now and have teams of humans who melt out arches over the streets and domes over the houses once it gets deep enough. Though you likely didn't notice, most of the houses in Lylean are built on sturdy posts topped by curved arches. They are very sound."

"A medieval Amundson-Scott Station," Titus chuckled.

"The building at the your Earth's South Pole rests on top of the ice, not within it."

"Uh... I suppose it did. I must have been thinking of that movie that took place somewhere in Antarctica, where they were always in snow caves. Anyway, what brings you here today?"

"I thought you might be bored and appreciate some company."

"And some release."

"That as well."

"I appreciated what you did the last time, but it was too clinical, and that made it uncomfortable. I don't care to repeat it."

"I could see from your expression I was too hasty."

"At the same time, it was extremely pleasurable, and if you were to do that again but at a pace I could deal with and truly enjoy what you were doing to me, I fear that no woman in Calar would be able to satisfy me afterward."

Saili cocked her head to the side and beamed a smile filled with mischief at him. "Challenge accepted," she giggled before vanishing.

Titus's eyes widened. "What? What?!"

---

After Saili's recommended two-day wait, the wind finally died down, and the snow lit up much brighter in the morning. Titus began slowly melting himself a set of steps to the surface, a task that became steadily more difficult as he made his way up into the less-packed snow. A handful of times, sudden cave-ins set him back hours' worth of work.

The sun was setting when he finally broke through the top layer of snow, but by that point, he was feeling exhausted and cursing himself for not starting to dig out the day before. Dejected but happy to have seen the cloud-laden sky through more than a tiny hole, Titus returned to his igloo for one more night.

---

As soon as his eyes opened the next morning, Titus hastily broke camp and started toward the surface. He cast Adaya's Lightfoot spell before stepping out onto the fresh powder deposited overnight, then took off toward home, taking long strides that chewed through the remaining distance.

With such deep snow, tree branches had now become a significant obstacle and threatened to drag him off course as he made his way around trees that he easily walked under on his trip to Lylean. They were only partly successful, however, and shortly before noon, he saw smoke rising from a chimney in the distance.

Titus took off running. Soon, he found the hole from which the smoke rose and began looking around for an entrance. He found it a surprising distance away because of its very gradual slope. That didn't stop him from slipping and sliding the nearly three stories to his and Alise's front door.

Crashing through the door, he bellowed, "Alise!" Then, turning toward the surprised shriek that came from the kitchen as he entered, Titus grinned and said, "I'm home!"